Best Practices for Authors on Facebook

If you have already published your book or are getting ready to publish your first one, it is never too late to start a Facebook page for yourself or your book. Your Facebook page is an essential part of your marketing took kit.

Getting Started:

Create a Facebook Page by going to facebook.com/pages/create

Select “Create Page”

Choose a category (Author or Book) under Entertainment

Name your page facebook.com/username

Publish your page

It’s that simple! Lets move on to customizing your page.

Basic steps:

Add a profile photo of you or your book

Complete the “about” section—tell your readers who you are!

Upload a cover photo

Now that that’s done, lets think of what we can post on the page.

Posting on Facebook

Be Authentic- Share your story with everyone, you are an author after all. Post book trailers, excerpts and teaser quotes from your book to garner attention.

Mix It Up- Post a mix of content from photos and videos to quotes and even related articles.

Engage Your Audience – Do a little Q&A with your readers. We’ve included directions on how to do a Facebook Q&A below. If you really want to get involved, see if there are some readers who want to start a book club and send them a short reading guide with discussion questions about the book.

Optimize and Measure- Facebook allows you to see how your posts are doing with the pages insights tool. See how many people your post reached, how many clicked on a link, and so much more! This way, you can concentrate on posting content more people are interested in.

Ask for Reviews – Facebook allows readers to leave reviews of your book on your page for others to read. Suggest to your readers to leave a review of your book. Remember to tell them not to reveal any spoilers!

If you want to do a Facebook Q&A with your audience, here is a helpful guide to get you started.

Facebook Q&As

Post a status update (preferably with a photo of you) a day or two in advance saying, “I will be hosting a Facebook Q&A on X day at X time” (remember to specify time zone)

On the day of the Q&A, post a picture of yourself that you are ready to answer questions with a picture of yourself at your laptop, signing books, etc.

It is a live, threaded, ranked comments feature. If you like (or an admin of your page “likes”) a question before you answer it it will pop to the top.

You can delete any spammy or irrelevant comments

Answer as many/as few/whichever questions you want from the comfort of your home or office (or while you’re on a book tour)

We hope this Facebook page start-up guide has been helpful for you. If you have questions, let us know and we will try to help you out!